Lenin and the Bolsheviks had attempted a takeover but had failed miserably and after July, the initiative to threaten the government seemed to pass from Lenin’s hands. The support for Bolsheviks started to decline.
It is too simplistic to suggest that it was only after the failed spontaneous uprisings of April and July that Lenin wanted a planned affair. From the very beginning Lenin insisted that the transfer of power from the Provisional Government to the Bolsheviks take this militarized form rather than the political form of a vote by the forthcoming All-Russian Congress of Soviets, an approach favored by Zinoviev and Kamenev. Lenin did this because he believed, as did Marx, that the class struggle was class warfare and so necessarily involved physical violence. No other method could demonstrate where the real power lay. Lenin deeply distrusted the revolutionary inclinations of his colleagues. He envisaged a disciplined and dedicated group of professional revolutionaries, which would act as the ‘vanguard of the proletariat.’ The events which led to the overthrow of the provisional government were not spontaneous but plotted and executed by a tightly organised conspiracy.
The Kornilov affair proved to be a major downfall for the Provisional government. Kerensky’s inept decision to seek help from the Soviets and provide the Red Army with weapons to thwart Kornilov proved to be a fatal error. The Bolsheviks were in power once again. Although the Provisional government survived the Kornilov revolt, popular support for the government faded rapidly as the national mood swung to the left in the fall of 1917. Workers took control of their factories through elected committees; peasants expropriated lands belonging to the state, church, nobility, and gentry; and armies melted away as peasant soldiers deserted to take part in the land seizures. The Bolsheviks skillfully exploited these popular trends in their propaganda. Lenin’s arguments for the need of an immediate rebellion were based upon the fear of a ‘second Kornilov affair’ and of a surrender of Petrograd to the Germans. With their slogan of Peace, bread and land, the Bolsheviks deliberately undermined the authority of the Provisional Government, thus hastening its collapse.
In Petrograd the prevailing mood was bitter disillusion not revolution. The revolution in Petrograd had already received it's fatal wound in July, when the workers had risen demanding that the Soviets take power and set up an all socialist government, only to be suppressed with troops raised by the Soviet itself. Even in Moscow there was little enthusiasm for a seizure of power. There was none of the burning necessity of October 1905 (when there was a general strike throughout Russia demanding a democratic constitution) or the enthusiasm of February 1917. The revolution can be described as a "quiet revolution".
October was the result of one man, Lenin, who had to drag not merely the toilers but his own party into a battle that few had enthusiasm for. But the peasantry, the largest section of the toilers, was still loyal to the Socialist Revolutionaries, though they hated Kerensky's government. Popular support for the Bolsheviks did not necessarily mean popular support for a Bolshevik seizure of power. The Bolsheviks in Petrograd seemed to have been counting on a provocation by Kerensky because they feared there was insufficient support for a seizure except for defensive reasons. What the workers wished for was not a Bolshevik dictatorship but a government including all socialist parties from the popular socialists to the Bolsheviks. The soviets rather than the party attracted mass allegiance, which the Bolsheviks exploited. Lenin deliberately used popular support for the All Russia Soviet to mask the Bolshevik plan to seize power. Once in power, Lenin had no desire to share power with the All Russia Soviet or with any other socialist party, except the left SRs for a short period (December 1917 to March 1918). Support for the All Russia Soviet simply provided a smokescreen for a conspiracy.
Essential to a successful Bolshevik takeover was deception. The country was in no mood for a single party power. An uprising carried out under the slogan of the Soviet, Trotsky realized, was "something quite different." So, "whilst moving forward all along the line," he later explained, "we maintained an appearance of defensiveness." The Russian people’s (particularly Kronsdadt sailors’) hope for the rule of the Soviet was blown to ashes.
In other words, this Revolution was a minority military action. To be more precise, what did occur was an amateur police operation of the Military Revolutionary Committee, some sailors of the Baltic fleet and a handful of Red Guards to take over the nerve-centers of the capital on the night of October 24th. The Petrograd proletariat and the city's military garrison remained overwhelmingly neutral. Since there were no forces to fight for the Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks had almost nothing to overthrow. As Lenin himself put it, the Party "found power lying in the streets and simply picked it up."
The belief that the October/November revolution was a popular uprising was promoted in successive Soviet governments up to the fall of USSR in 1991 for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was important to legitimise the Soviet regime. Lenin was glorified as a great national leader. Secondly, the Soviet regime saw itself as the model for any future socialist society. In 1945, Soviet Union became involved in a cold war with the USA and the West and with both sides trying to prove their superiority, the use of such propaganda became even more important.
In conclusion, the October Revolution can be described as an "armed insurrection" carried out by the Bolshevik Party using the apparatus of the Petrograd Soviet. If one were to look at the events following October revolution, it would be safe to conclude that the Bolsheviks didn’t plan to form a coalition government. Lenin planned to rule alone and maintained power through the use of political terror and repression. Due to a thirst for political power and through the means of deception and false promises for a better life, Lenin successfully established himself as a dictatorial leader of the Russian people. Therefore, the October revolution of 1917 can be considered as a classic coup d’état.
